Teenage photographer killed in Syria

A teenage photographer working for Reuters has been killed in Syria

A 17-year-old freelance photographer whose powerful images ofSyriawere printed around the world has been killed while photographing a hospital in Aleppo.

Molhem Barakat died while photographing Kindi hospital – scene of a battle between rebel forces and President Bashar al-Assad's troops.

The teenager had been submitting photographs to Reuters news agency since May, and his photos of the war and daily life were widely published.

On Thursday, the day before his death, he took a striking an image of a member of the Liwaa al-Sultan Mrad brigade – a division of the Free Syrian Army. In the photo the man sits with his back to a mirror, which reflects the devastation of the streets around him. He cradles a gun, with Islamic scriptures on wall hangings displayed from the stone walls around him.

In another, three young boys use an old washing machine as a makeshift stove – warming their hands from the flickering flames.

Tributes poured in for the young journalist – but also questions about how he ended up working in such an environment.

"Molhem was my friend, the first person I met in Aleppo – a seventeen year old who I'd watch change from a happy teenager to a messed up young man who, at one stage, was adamant that he wanted to join al-Qaeda," wrote Hannah Lucinda Smith, a British journalist based in Istanbul,on her blog.

"In the end he didn't join al-Qaeda; he started working as a photographer, hoping to emulate some of the journalists he was hanging around with.

"He often asked me if he could work with me and I refused, because I didn't want the responsibility of an eager 17-year-old with no war zone training and little experience on my shoulders. Soon afterwards I saw that he was filing photos for Reuters. I hope that they took responsibility for him in a way that I couldn't, and I hope that if he was taking photographs as he died in the hope of selling them to that agency, they also take responsibility for him now."

She continued: "What can you really say about a 17-year-old who has just been killed in his own city? All you can do is state the obvious. His life should be a quarter of the way through, not over. He shouldn't have been anywhere near a front line."